Tiger Woods leads Tour Championship by 3 after third-round 65
ATLANTA -- Golfers know how nice it looks to see 3s on the scorecard, and Tiger Woods made a bunch of them Saturday at East Lake to take his first 54-hole lead in a tournament since his last victory in 2013.
Woods began his round with five consecutives 3s, six birdies in his first seven holes and shot the lowest score of the day, a 5-under-par 65 to take a three-stroke advantage over Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose into the final round of the Tour Championship, the PGA Tour's season-ending event.
A victory on Sunday would be the 80th of Woods' PGA Tour career and his first since the 2013 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, where he last held a 54-hole advantage.
With the three-stroke lead, the Westgate SuperBook in Las Vegas has Woods as an odds-on -175 favorite to finish off the victory Sunday. McIlroy is the second favorite at +350, followed by Rose at +400.
In addition, Woods is also now the favorite to win next year's Masters. Heading into the Tour Championship, he was 12-1, behind then-Masters favorite Jordan Spieth. But by the end of Saturday's third round, Woods' odds had been trimmed to 9-1, ahead of Spieth, at the Westgate.
Throughout his career, Woods has been nearly automatic when holding at least a share of the third-round lead. He is 53-4 on PGA Tour, with the last time he failed to convert coming at the 2009 PGA Championship, where Y.E. Yang overcame a two-shot deficit.
But much has transpired since then, and Woods - despite contending several times in 2018 - has not had an advantage heading into the final day.
In the six times this year that Woods finished in the top 10, the closest he was to the top was a tie for second and one shot back at the Valspar Championship in March. There he shot a final-round 70 and finished one stroke behind winner Paul Casey.
The closest he was in any of the other chances was four shots, at both The Open and the PGA Championship, the latter where he shot a final-round 64 and finished two shots back of Brooks Koepka.
Woods began the day in a tie with Rose at 7 under par. But Woods quickly pulled ahead with a birdie on the first while Rose bogeyed the first two holes. The lead was five strokes after Woods birdied the seventh and again after Rose bogeyed the 14th.
But for the second straight day, Woods had trouble at the par-4 16th, where he made a double bogey on Friday and then bogeyed the hole after slipping while hitting his tee shot Saturday. When Rose birdied the hole, the advantage was down to three strokes.
McIlroy, the FedEx Cup champion, birdied two of the last three holes to shoot 66 and pull within three shots. He will be grouped with Woods in the final pairing.
ESPN's David Purdum contributed to this report.
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